pennyspoetryfandomcom-20200214-history
Marsden Hartley
| birth_place = Lewiston, Maine, United States | death_date = September | death_place = Ellsworth, Maine, United States | nationality = American | field = Painting | training = Cleveland Institute of Art, National Academy of Design | movement = American Modernism | works = | patrons = | influenced by = Albert Pinkham Ryder | influenced = | awards = }} Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 - September 2, 1943) was a Modernist American poet, painter, and essayist. Life Youth and education Hartley was born in Lewiston, Maine, . where his English parents had settled. He was the youngest of 9 children. . His birth name was Edmund Hartley; he later assumed Marsden as his first name when he was in his early 20s. His mother died when he was 8, and his father remarried 4 years later to Martha Marsden. When Hartley was 14, his family moved to Ohio, leaving him behind in Maine to work in a shoe factory for a year.Hartley, Marsden. Somehow a Past: The Autobiography of Marsden Hartley. Ed. Susan Elizabeth Ryan. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997 p. 48 These bleak occurrences led Hartley to recall his New England childhood as a time of painful loneliness, so much so that in a letter to Alfred Stieglitz, he once described the New England accent as "a sad recollection that rushed into my very flesh like sharpened knives." quoted in East, Elyssa. Dogtown: Death and Enchantment in a New England Ghost Town. New York: Free Press, 2009. Print. p.26 Hartley began his art training at the Cleveland Institute of Art after his family moved to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1892. He won a scholarship to the Cleveland School of Art. In 1898 Hartley moved to New York City to study painting at the New York School of Art under William Merritt Chase, and then attended the National Academy of Design. Hartley was a great admirer of Albert Pinkham Ryder and visited his studio in Greenwich Village as often as possible. His friendship with Ryder, plus his exposure to the writings of Walt Whitman and American transcendentalists Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson, inspired Hartley to view art as a spiritual quest. Maturation and New York exhibitions , Edward Steichen, Arthur B. Carles, John Marin; back: Marsden Hartley, Laurence Fellows, c. 1911, Bates College Museum of Art]] Hartley moved to an abandoned farm near Lovell, Maine, in 1908. He considered the paintings he produced there his first mature works, and they also impressed New York photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz. Hartley had his 1st solo exhibition at Stieglitz's 291 in 1909, and exhibited his work there again in 1912. Stieglitz also provided Hartley's introduction to European modernist painters, of whom Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse would prove the most influential upon him. Hartley in Europe Hartley traveled to Europe in April 1912, and became acquainted with Gertrude Stein's circle of avante-garde writers and artists in Paris. Stein, along with Hart Crane and Sherwood Anderson, encouraged Hartley to write as well as paint. In 1913, Hartley moved to Berlin, where he continued to paint and befriended the painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc. He also collected Bavarian folk art. . His work during this period was a combination of abstraction and German Expressionism, fueled by his personal brand of mysticism. Many of Hartley's Berlin paintings were further inspired by the German military pageantry then on display, though his view of this subject changed after the outbreak of World War I, once war was no longer "a romantic but a real reality." The earliest of his Berlin paintings were shown in the landmark 1913 Armory Show in New York. In Berlin, Hartley developed a close relationship with a Prussian lieutenant, Karl von Freyburg, who was the cousin of Hartley's friend Arnold Ronnebeck. References to Freyburg were a recurring motif in Hartley's work, most notably in Portrait of a German Officer (1914). . Freyburg's subsequent death during the war hit Hartley hard, and he afterward idealized their relationship. Many scholars believe Hartley to have been gay, and have interpreted his work regarding Freyburg as embodying his homosexual feelings for him. "The painter of Maine" Hartley returned to the U.S. in early 1916. He lived in Europe again from 1921 to 1930, when he moved back to the U.S. for good. He painted throughout the country, in Massachusetts, New Mexico, California, and New York. He returned to Maine in 1937, after declaring that he wanted to become "the painter of Maine" and depict American life at a local level. . This aligned Hartley with the Regionalism movement, a group of artists active from the early- to-mid 20th century that attempted to represent a distinctly "American art." He continued to paint in Maine, primarily scenes around Lovell and the Corea, Maine, coast, until his death in Ellsworth, Maine. His ashes were scattered on the Androscoggin River. Writing In addition to being considered a foremost American painter of the 1st half of the 20th century, Hartley also wrote poems, essays, and stories. His book Twenty-five Poems was published by Robert McAlmon in Paris in 1923. Cleophas and His Own: A North Atlantic tragedy is a narrative poem based on 2 periods he spent in 1935 and 1936 with the Mason family in the Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, fishing community of East Point Island. Hartley, then in his late 50s, found there both an innocent, unrestrained love and the sense of family he had been seeking since his unhappy childhood in Maine. The impact of this experience lasted until his death in 1943 and helped widen the scope of his mature works, which included numerous portrayals of the Masons. He wrote of the Masons, "Five magnificent chapters out of an amazing, human book, these beautiful human beings, loving, tender, strong, courageous, dutiful, kind, so like the salt of the sea, the grit of the earth, the sheer face of the cliff." In Cleophas and His Own, written in Nova Scotia in the fall of 1936 and re-printed in Marsden Hartley and Nova Scotia, Hartley expresses his immense grief at the tragic drowning of the Mason sons. Recognition In 2005, independent filmmaker Michael Maglaras rekeased a feature film, Cleophas and His Own: A North Atlantic tragedy, which uses a posthumously discovered narrative poem by Hartley for its screenplay.Cleophas and His Own: A North Atlantic tragedy, View Clips, 217 Films. Web, May 31, 2019. A catalogue raisonné of Hartley's work is underway by art historian Gail Levin, Distinguished Professor at Baruch College, and The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. Publications Poetry *''Selected Poems'' (edited by Henry W. Wells). New York: Viking, 1945. *''Eight Poems and one Essay by Marsden Hartley (1877-1943): In the Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection, Treat Gallery''. Lewiston, ME: Bates College, 1976. *''Collected Poems, 1904-1943'' (edited by Gail R. Scott). Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow, 1987. Non-fiction *''Adventures in the Arts: Informal chapters on painters, vaudeville, and poets.'' New York: Boni & Liveright, 1921; New York: Hacker Art Books, 1972. *''On Art'' (edited by Gail R. Scott). New York : Horizon Press, 1982. *''Somehow a Past: The autobiography of Marsden Hartley'' (edited by Susan Elizabeth Ryan). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. Art *''Marsden Hartley''. Santa Fe, NM: Museum of New Mexico Art Gallery, 1958. *''Marsden Hartley: A retrospective exhibition, September 16-October 4, 1969''. New York: Bernard Danenberg Galleries, 1969. *''Ninety-nine Drawings by Marsden Hartley: From its Marsden Hartley memorial collection, Treat Gallery''. Lewiston, ME: Bates College Art Dept., 1970. *''Marsden Hartley: Lithographs and related works''. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Museum of Art, 1972. *''Marsden Hartley, 1877-1943: Paintings and drawings''. New York : Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, 1985. *''Marsden Hartley in Bavaria: An exhibition'' (compiled by Gail Levin & William Salzillo). Clinton, NY: Fred L. Emerson Gallery, 1989. *''Marsden Hartley: Drawings'' (compiled by Bruce Robertson). New York: Kraushaar Galleries, 2000. *''Marsden Hartley : the German paintings 1913-1915'' (compiled by Dieter Scholz & Ilene Susan Fort). Berlin: Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2014. Letters *''Heart's gate : letters between Marsden Hartley & Horace Traubel, 1906-1915'' (edited by William Innes Homer). Highlands, NC: Jargon Society, 1982. *''My dear Stieglitz : letters of Marsden Hartley and Alfred Stieglitz, 1912-1915'' (edited by James Timothy Voorhies). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2002. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Marsden Hartley, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, June 28, 2015. See also *List of U.S. poets References *Cassidy, Donna M. Marsden Hartley: Race, Region, and Nation. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005. *Coco, Janice. "Dialogues with the Self: New thoughts on Marsden Hartley's Self-Portraits," Prospects: An annual of American cultural studies 30 (2005), 623–649. *Ferguson, Gerald, Ed. by Ronald Paulson and Gail R. Scott. Marsden Hartley and Nova Scotia. Halifax, NS: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1987. ISBN 0-919616-32-1 *Harnsberger, R. Scott. Four Artists of the Stieglitz Circle: A Sourcebook on Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, and Max Weber Reference Collection, no. 26. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2002. *Haskell, Barbara. Marsden Hartley. Exhibition Catalogue. Whitney Museum of American Art. New York: New York University Press, 1980. *Hole, Heather. Marsden Hartley and the West: The search for an American modernism. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007. *Kornhauser, Elizabeth Mankin, Ed. Marsden Hartley. Exhibition catalogue. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003. *Ludington, Townsend. Marsden Hartley: The Biography of an American Artist. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. *Scott, Gail R. Marsden Hartley. New York: Abbeville Press, 1988. *Weinberg, Jonathan. Speaking for Vice: Homosexuality in the Art of Charles Demuth, Marsden Hartley, and the First American Avant- Garde. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Fonds *Marsden Hartley Memorial Collection and Archives, Bates College Museum of Art Notes External links ;Poems *"Salutations to a Mouse" *Hartley in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "In the Frail Wood," "Spinsters," "Her Daughter," "After Battle," "The Festival of the Corn," "Español," "Girl with the Camelia Smile," "The Topaz of the Sixties," "The Asses' Out-house," "C—," Saturday" ;Prose *[http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hartley.html Marsden Hartley, Art and the Personal Life], 1928, by Hartley accessed online Aug. 7, 2007 *The Importance of Being "Dada" from Adventures in the arts. ;Audio / video *Marsden Hartley at YouTube ;Books * *Scans of Hartley's [http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/adventures%20in%20the%20arts/index.htm Adventures in the arts: informal chapters on painters, vaudeville and poets] *https://www.amazon.com/Marsden-Hartley/e/B001HP15FG Marsden Hartley] at Amazon.com ;About *Marsden Hartley in the Encyclopedia of World Biography *Marsden Hartley (1877-1943) at The Phillips Collection *Marsden Hartley in ArtCyclopedia *Marsden Hartley and beyond at the Bates Museum of Art *[http://conversations.psu.edu/episodes/michael_maglaras Marsden Hartley discussed in Conversations from Penn State] interview ;Etc. *Metropolitan Museum of Art on Marsden Hartley *Marsden Hartley – National Gallery of Art *Marsden Hartley: American Modern – Memphis Brooks Museum of Art *Marsden Hartley – New Mexico Museum of Art Category:1877 births Category:1943 deaths Category:19th-century American painters Category:20th-century American painters Category:American people of English descent Category:Modern painters Category:Dada Category:Gay artists Category:Guggenheim Fellows Category:LGBT artists from the United States Category:Art Students League of New York alumni Category:People from Lewiston, Maine Category:Artists from Maine Category:American portrait painters Category:People from Oxford County, Maine Category:People from Ellsworth, Maine Category:Federal Art Project Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Modernist poets Category:Poets Category:American poets